[Editor's note: A version of this story appears in the January 2019 edition of Oil and Gas Investor. Subscribe to the magazine here.]

In January 2016, three E&P executives met at a Panera Bread in Houston and contemplated what had brought them to this point. John Campbell III, Brian Zwart and Lupe Carrillo had just departed Rockcliff Energy LLC as the operator closed out its first phase and moved onto Rockcliff II.

The triumvirate formed Percussion Petroleum LLC to take advantage of market bargains and ready private-equity cash available to snag those assets. “We quit our jobs and, then, looked at each other during the lowest oil price that I had personally seen in my career. We wondered if we had made the right decision,” said Campbell, CEO.

“We’re calculated. Two of us are engineers and Lupe has a very deep background in oil fields, so he’s seen the ups and downs in oil price before. We’re pretty risk-averse, so it was a pretty big leap for us.”

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